


Home Again

by fearandlothering



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearandlothering/pseuds/fearandlothering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seeds of the Mage-Templar War have been planted. And in the chaos, Hawke flees Kirkwall, only to end up right where she started. In a blight-ravaged, rebuilding Lothering, she finally begins to come to terms with herself, her family, and what her role will be in things to come.</p><p>After all, there's a war on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Again

This is the last place she wants to be. But the only one that makes a semblance of sense anymore. Lothering doesn’t look itself anymore, a smouldering ruin that should, for everyone’s sake, have stayed a ghost town. But there are whispers of life, a poor attempt to rebuild a previously modest little hamlet with even more modest means. It had been perfect when she was a child—when the twins were children, rather—a poor little town that would hardly notice another family barely making do. The heavy Templar presence had been less than ideal, but the Chantry had larger worries than mage-hunting vigilance. 

That is no longer the case. The only building that had even seemed to partially survive the Blight was the Chantry, and it had been the first thing rebuild, at extraordinary cost. Intricate stonework stood in place of the thick sturdy wood that had once been, and Hawke was left to wonder whether the intimidation was meant on behalf of the seemingly-vanquished darkspawn threat, or if rumours of the war brewing back in the Marches had reached this far south. It is not the same building, though it stands in the same place. And whatever the intent, she doubts they stand for the same thing.

 _Stand._ Ha.

She chuckled to herself as they passed, only letting a small hint of a smile slip, and Fenris’ raised brow asked more questions than he did aloud.  
It wouldn’t be funny if she had to explain it.

They passed through the silent half-town: she, Fenris, and Champion. Hawke half expected a welcoming committee of the worst sort, gangs that seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. But this was not Kirkwall, and Lothering had nothing left of worth to offer raiders and thieves who had been beaten by hordes of darkspawn to bleeding the village dry.

She’d just pretend that wasn’t a literal bleeding.

Champion lagged behind, having gained a slight limp from so much travel so quickly; it had been made inexplicably clear that she had long worn out her welcome. That Kirkwall was not home.

As if she could call a city that when it only held death.

Fenris had followed without a word, save to tell Anders that he would not be welcome. Hawke’s heart dropped, as if she’d still be holding onto some fragile, futile hope that everything would still work out. But to be a Hawke was to have your life inevitiably linked with tragedy, attached at the hip and sewn in to every limb. Kirkwall had been easy to hold onto, a distraction in-between all the bullshit. She had been comfortable, and perhaps that should have been the first warning.

As they trod hand-in-hand over darkened, plagued earth that would never again grow, all that came to mind was something Aveline had said all those years ago, when they’d crossed that rolling, thrashing, sickening ocean to come to a city chained in its own denial.

_“ ‘You can’t go home again.’ That’s supposed to be about maturity. It’s not the same if you don’t have the option.”_

A sense of dread sinks in, weighing her limbs and blossoming in her stomach like a slow poison: Aveline was right. But what choice did she truly have when faced with forced conscription, death, possibly Tranquility, and the whole of Starkhaven’s armies for her unwitting assistance in starting a war that she’d never been interested in fighting? And certainly not spearheading? She would never say Anders was wrong, not truly, but even the best intentions clearly had the worst bloody outcomes. 

She’d seen too much death to truly fancy it, walking into its arms willingly, even if she knew…believed that it would be the only way to ever see her family again. Bethany must have knocked Mum and Dad’s heads together by now, and if they were happy…

No. No if. Surely the Maker couldn’t hate the lot of them so badly as to deny them happiness after everything else?

But family or no, they wouldn’t be going anywhere. And she could never forgive herself for giving into death so carelessly. Humourous dark flippancy and a penchant for denial aside.

But they’d had the whole world; why had she dragged the group—too small, now—back of a land of just as much death? And all without assurances from her brother or her Warden Commander cousin?

“Hawke, where are we going?”

Home. But it wouldn’t be home. Not again.

You can’t go home again when you’d never had one to begin with. And Fenris seemed to understand that better than most, even if only because he barely remembered it.

“I made a promise to my father,” she said quietly, looking back to the small load Champion bore on his back without complaint (he was a more resilient companion than she deserved, but there was no arguing with a mabari).

Fenris nodded curtly, and without another word, his fingers tightened around hers. “And then?”

“Wherever we want. Oh, a vacation maybe. A beach? One without dead pirates, hopefully. Or—”

“Hawke.”

Hawke swallowed around the sudden lump in her tightening throat. “I don’t know.”

Keeping their hands locked together, Fenris prodded Hawke in the stomach with his elbow. “Let’s at least get you to your father then? We should move on.”

If only he knew how true that really was.


End file.
